Bagel Bites

Daily Bagel: Family matters

Thank God it's Friday.

Courtney Nguyen

Courtney Nguyen

— 10 min read
Daily Bagel: Family matters
Credit: Jimmie48

Internet ephemera from the tennis world and beyond. Have something you want to include? Join the Discord  – we have a really nice and active community growing there – or hmu on Bluesky.

  • Did the WTA get breached? A few days after Lucrezia Stefanini posted about getting a photo of a gun sent to her and her family threatened ahead of her first-round qualifying match in Indian Wells, Panna Udvardy posts about a similar incident ahead of her participation at an ITF event in Antalya, Turkey. According to Panna's post, she spoke to the WTA supervisor who told her "they believe personal information may have leaked from the WTA database." That would certainly explain how bettors suddenly have players' private phone numbers – usually these messages are sent on social media accounts – and home addresses. Needless to say, this is beyond alarming if true. The WTA has yet to confirm whether a breach occurred. (Instagram)
Michael Geerts receives threats before game vs Sakellaridis: "You won't have any hands left to play with"
by u/MrDecay in tennis
  • Emma Raducanu doesn't have a problem finding that aggressive style she's looking for against the top players. It's doing it against players ranked below her as well. That's where things get a bit muddy for her. (The Athletic)
“When you’re playing someone who’s top five and who hits a ball that big, you think I might as well try and go toe to toe,” Robson, who is part of Sky Sports’ team at Indian Wells, told a group of reporters.

“So I think if she has that mindset in more matches and wants to get the job done two and two (6-2, 6-2) and try and hit winners, then it’s naturally going to feel like a more positive playing experience

“Because you’re just going to sit up on the baseline a bit more and you’re going to try and take the ball on the rise a lot more."

The challenge is doing this under the other kind of pressure in tennis — that of being the favorite. Raducanu has generally established herself as someone who beats players she ought to, but in 2026, she is yet to meet a player ranked above her and is 6-6 on the year as she seeks to rediscover what she perceives as her tennis identity.

“I wouldn’t say it’s as clear as other players,” Robson said of Raducanu’s game. “She kind of slots into half big-hitting, half counterpunching. She moves really well, which is a massive benefit to her. I think it’s still a work in progress for her, which is what she was finding as well.”
  • Serena says "messy" I say "cookin":
  • Richard Pagliaro goes long with Max Mirnyi about working with Aryna Sabalenka and the keys to advising someone who sits at No.1 in the world. There's some great insight into the evolution of the sport on the men's side. The meat and bones starts after the IM8 sponcon. (TennisNow)
  • Jon Wertheim sat down with Felix Auger Aliassime. (SI.com)
Yeah, in Australia, the cramping was quite confusing, especially for the fact that it’s not something that’s happened to me a lot in my career, and there’s circumstances that you can understand if you’re deep in a Grand Slam, or it’s very humid, or there’s high level of stress in a match. A first round of a Grand Slam, just in the third set? It was not something I thought would happen. I was very confused on the court when it was happening, and then I couldn’t really get it to go. I just couldn’t get back to a good level physically. So yeah, I guess we thought that maybe we had too short of a preparation leading up to the event, something like that. But once I got back to the practice court and to training back home after Australia, I felt much better when I started competing again.

27 bucks?!?!

When Gauff first heard that Austin had a “Rage Room,” she assumed it was fake. “My mom sent it to me, and I told her it was AI. She believes so many AI things.”

Upon finding out the room was the real deal, Gauff said she’d “definitely” use it.

“They have ones, I think here,” Gauff said in response to a question by FOS. A BNP Paribas Open representative told FOS the tournament does not have an official “Rage Room.” But because the event is not broadcast by ESPN, there are fewer cameras and more quiet areas for players.

Former women’s world No. 3 Maria Sakkari told FOS she’s never broken a racket after a match, but she has other emotions she prefers not to be televised. “You always want to have a little space to maybe either cry or just sit on your own or have a chat with your team. You’re always worried to have cameras around.”
Every year, when I see the bright purple tennis courts of tennis “paradise” (have we seen the wind?), I think back of the moment I entered the hotel lobby of the Grand Hyatt in Indian Wells for the first time and saw more or less ten to fifteen women of striking beauty sitting at the hotel bar. At first, I thought nothing of it. Coincidence, the desert makes them pretty, everyone looks good on vacation - things like that.

A week into the tournament, I realised that these women were there to pull a tennis player. I wouldn’t necessarily call them groupies as there was no music involved but they were tennis groupies, alright.
  • Also this:
Lesson 3: This one’s along the same lines of lesson 2. Tennis players are basic. They don’t care about the band Geese or Cameron Winter or the new Richard Linklater movie about Jean-Luc Godard. They don’t know who Jim Jarmusch is or that Greta Gerwig used to be an actress and made the black and white movie Frances Ha (great movie!) Keep it simple. They like Drake and David Guetta, their favourite series is Breaking Bad or Prison Break, they probably think Wuthering Heights was good and their favourite movie is definitely Braveheart (Millenials) or F1: The Movie (Gen Z). Don’t try to impress them with your obscure pop culture knowledge. Ask them who their favourite football club is (Europeans) and what their team is in the NFL (Americans), compliment their Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery and you’ll have things to talk about for days.
Although more than 90% of coaches are men, the top-ranked teenager in each of the 2006, 2007, and 2008 birth years is coached by a woman✨
by u/mimiclarinette in tennis

pretty cool!

“I remember feeling this energy. This guy loves tennis and loves to work with players, and I just remember that,” Berrettini said. “I was like, ‘Who knows, maybe in the future we can work together’. And it happened, so I'm really happy and proud of that.”
  • If you want to see some crazy wind tennis – is now the time for me to reiterate my firm belief there should be a Wind Rule that stops play? – check out the highlights from Dimitrov-Atmane.

grigor vs. carlos next.

  • The wind had died down by the evening on Thursday, which meant we got a really fun match between Hailey Baptiste and Rizzmaster General Emiliana Arango. Baptiste pulled off the three-set win 2-6, 6-2 ,6-3. She gets Rybakina next.

highlights don't do it justice, but what else is new.

  • After his first-round win, Gael Monfils spoke about how difficult it was for his generation of French stars to break through to win Slams. He referred to "The Three Legends" and "The Three Beauties". Wait, no, Four:
"Let's say three legends and three beauties, to be fair. I feel like Roger, Rafa, and Novak were just incredible where [they] dominate the game, and they were legend. They didn't let so much. What they could let a little bit was just three guys who actually were amazing and for me legends, as well, is Andy, Stan, and Marin.

"That was the three guys – and, sorry, Juan Martin. Juan Martin. Those guys, let's say, could pick up a little bit the leftovers, if I can say, in a way. They have been legends, as well.

"Then for us was hard. We were just under, just under, couldn't find a solution to beat them. Just cannot be as good as Stan, Marin, and Juan Martin, also, because those guys, they were in the right moment. They could lift up the level, lift up physically, lift up mentally."
  • And on that note, let's all sit back and take in one-hour of Juan Martin Del Potro being that Beauty:
Forty Deuce runs on coffee. Buy me a cuppa at Ko-fi!
  • I'm more confident in Ash Barty turing pro in golf than Serena coming back in tennis, which is more a comment about how sure I am about Ash rather than unsure about Serena:
  • Louder, Drew:
  • I was raised on ESPN Sportscenter and it's just depressing to see how it effectively went from the "plucky fun kids" to "state-sponsored media".
  • This is fantastic because she makes her point while also not discriminating against who can have the opportunity:
  • Sometimes I ask smart, deep questions. Sometimes I ask stupid, fun questions. It's not about everyone has to take this seriously and be serious. No, you don't have to be serious. But you have to take THE JOB seriously. That is the distinction.

again, no one is saying you can't be here. but you gotta do the work.

and if you're someone aiming to be a journalist or writer, this trend should infuriate you more than anyone. at least those of us who are already inside have a foot in the door.

  • Sometimes it's good to be reminded that actors benefit A LOT from the words written for them by screenwriters. Because sometimes when they're left to their own words....it's not great:

the 14 cents line is just....mean?

  • Chalamet has family in ballet, so this very much could be him making what would be a funny "inside" joke, so I'm inclined to give him a pass on the literal words he's using when the idea behind them may (or may not) have merit. But BROTHER you are 100% media trained at this point, you have to know you're playing with live ammo.

I wrote about The Bride! (exclamation point mandatory), which I like more than any movie I’ve seriously considered walking out of.

— Sam Adams (@samadams.bsky.social) 2026-03-06T15:34:52.437Z
  • The reviews for THE BRIDE only make me want to watch it ASAP.
  • I came back to the hotel last night and GODFATHER PART TWO was on and I just sat on the bed and watched the whole second half without moving. Remains an absolute banger.
  • Bop of the Day: My algorithm pushed a bunch of Naruto dance meme videos into my FYP so I've had Silhouette stuck in my head for days:

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